Cats are known for their aloof independence. Sure, your cat will curl up in your lap and purr while you pet him, but how often do you see cats sit…or speak…or fetch on demand? Nobody trains guard CATS. There are no Feline Units in your local police department. So the visual image above of cowboys herding cats is meant to be absurd, showing that corralling a bunch of snooty independent cats is a tough job.

“Herding Cats” also accurately describes efforts to get independence-minded patriots to work together. Let me tell you a story that illustrates this phrase well.

Back in the decade of the 2000s, I shifted from being an activist, conservative, Marine Corps-loving, pro-war, pro-gun, rock-ribbed Republican to being a Libertarian. I had read book after book about liberty, and it became quite clear in the pages of Thomas Paine, John Locke, Frederick Hayek, Lysander Spooner, Frederic Bastiat, Henry Hazlitt, Mises, Rothbard, Nock, etc. … that the worldview of the Republicans bore no resemblance to the worldview of lovers of liberty. And the Libertarian Party embraced all those authors, as well as writers like Dr. Mary Ruwart and her book “Healing Our World.” I thought the Libertarians had the perfect political platform. So I joined the local chapter and the national Libertarian Party, and set about finding ways to be an activist Libertarian.

What I discovered about Libertarians is that they are so dedicated to individualism that organizing them into a coherent group, pointed in one direction, was nearly impossible. And so my dream of a political party that espoused precepts of individual liberty and property rights was dashed on the rocks of reality.

So, how do we take that story and apply it to the Independence Movement in the State of Texas?

Texas has the most well-organized independence movements of all the US states. But recently, I have been hearing rumblings from the Lone Star State that all is not brotherhood and sisterhood in the Independence movement.

The two most influential Independence groups in Texas are the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) and Freedom Texas. Then there is the Republic of Texas group, who has had recent scrapes with the Texas government and Texas courts. These groups are dedicated to returning the US state of Texas to its status as a sovereign nation, shaking off its Federal shackles and to “stand among the nations (Sam Houston).”

Next, we look at the various issue-oriented groups that exist in Texas. Gun rights groups, the NRA, Tea Party, FairTax groups, anti-abortion groups, anti-immigration groups and list goes on. These groups already know how tough it is to make a dent in the culture and make a difference in Austin.

Separately, these groups stand little chance of turning the attention of the Texas populace toward their issues, or toward Texas Nationalism. But together, there could be synergy, and there would certainly be heightened awareness of the benefits of a nation of Texas.

A problem arises when any one of these group’s leaders assert that they and they alone are the Sine Qua Non…the pre-eminent and only…spokesmen for Texas Liberty. That is political suicide. Exclusion won’t work. Stating “you can’t be one of our members and be a member of any other group too” only makes you look petty, small and insecure. Take the time to get everybody who cares about individual liberty and property rights to gather under the big tent.

Texas Independence WILL NEVER HAPPEN if the Independence movement has little Napoleons all over Texas, each trying to carve out their little kingdoms. Texas Independence MUST be about two things and two things only…individual liberty and property rights. Because all the other single issues pale into insignificance when compared to individual liberty and property rights. Fighting turf wars, or arguing over single issues is akin to arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

NOW is the time for planning and preparing for the future. NOW is the time that all the divergent groups must come together to unite around individual liberty and property rights. NOW is the time to prepare for the trigger event that will require a response.

It is my considered opinion that there MUST be an economic trigger to get the people of Texas to pivot toward nationhood. Recent history has shown that massive intrusion by Washington DC into the inner workings of the State of Texas have not resulted in a unified call for secession. The people of Texas and the state government in Austin will accept pretty much any legislation and insult visited upon them by DC. They may complain, but they will not fight back. Enough is NEVER enough.

So what could be the trigger? Stated more clearly…what WILL be the economic trigger?

The collapse of the US Dollar will be the economic event that will change the minds of people…from the outhouse to the State House…and galvanize public sentiment for secession and nationhood.

The Dollar will collapse, meaning that its purchasing power will collapse in a flurry of massive hyperinflation. The Western nations are all locked into a debt-based monetary system, linked to each other by the world reserve currency, the US Dollar. China is planning something different. China heads the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South America), and China is moving steadily toward a gold-backed monetary system. China is making deals with nations all over the globe to clear monetary transactions without using the Dollar. And at some point soon, critical mass will be achieved, the new system will be in place, and the Chinese Renminbi will supplant the Dollar as World Reserve Currency. This could happen through any number of events:

1. China could simply announce that it is taking over, and the other nations will pivot to China.
2. China could dump Treasury bonds in a large quantity into the bond market, thereby collapsing the US Treasury Bond Market and the Dollar simultaneously. This could be a retaliatory tactic against Washington’s imperialism worldwide.
3. China can quietly continue to make more and more deals with other nations, and let market economics make the decision on what currency is World Reserve. (This is actually what China is doing now)
4. What happens when you loan money, the borrower defaults, and you cannot collect then debt? You go bankrupt. That is, in effect, what will happen to the Western banking system. What happens when a country like France or Germany simply says, “We are not going to play anymore. We are cashing in our US Treasuries today.” But what happens to Western banks when 100 countries all default on their debt or cash in their bond holdings? Collection is unenforceable. It will happen again in your lifetime.

But there will eventually be a tipping point…a black swan event, if you will. Inevitably, there will come a day when the trillions of US Dollars that have flooded the earth will be rejected by other nations. At that time, all of that currency will come flooding back to the USA. The dollar will become worthless seemingly overnight.

When Joe Sixpack in some tiny Texas town can’t buy one Shiner Beer with a $20 bill, you’ll know that he will listen when you talk about the benefits of secession and Texas nationhood. As I have stated in the past…missing a few meals tends to focus the mind on a solution. This example, though meant to be amusing, does not adequately speak to the devastating effects of a Dollar collapse. There will be widespread hunger, death, crime, societal breakdown and riots. Only those with hard assets and guns will have a chance of survival.

The faster Texas secedes and becomes a sovereign nation, the faster the crisis will be overcome.

And finally…I mentioned the State House earlier. Texas has a new governor now, Greg Abbott. From what I have seen, the Governor is no more a friend of Texas independence than Rick Perry was. And how many Texas legislators have publicly stated their unflagging support for secession from the United States? Are there any? My opinion is that Austin will not be the place you should look for leadership about Texas Independence…at least not before the economic trigger. Once the Dollar collapse happens, they will be meeting in emergency sessions trying to figure out what to do. Secession may look like a pretty good idea when their backs are against the wall. Just remember the old visual about a parade going down the street, and some politician jumping out in front of it so he looks like he’s leading it.

Texas will need statesmen, not politicians. Texas will need men of vision like Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and Paine. God grant that such men and women will step up when duty calls. Many statesmen and women exist now in groups like Freedom Texas and the TNM.

Texas patriots, the time is NOW to band together and work tirelessly toward the Nation of Texas.

The “Asian Pivot” in the title is a recently-invented phrase which describes world nations pivoting away from American allegiance and pivoting toward Asia and specifically China.

Spengler is a link to an outstanding article by “Spengler” at The Asian Times. You MUST read this. The American Main Stream Media will not report this, yet this meeting that happened November 16th – 20th, was the single most important market shift in the last 100 years.

Here are a few excerpts:

“It is symptomatic of the national condition of the United States that the worst humiliation ever suffered by it as a nation, and by a US president personally, passed almost without comment last week.

Does the United States have a competitive advantage? Apart from commercial aircraft, power-generating equipment, and agriculture, it has few areas of real industrial pre-eminence. Cheap natural gas helps low-value-added industries such as fertilizer, but the US is lagging in the industrial space.

…The US still dominated the nuclear power plant industry. With the sale of the Westinghouse nuclear power business to Toshiba, and Toshiba’s joint ventures with China to build (thorium) power plants locally, that advantage has evaporated.

The problem is that Americans have stopped investing in the sort of high-tech, high-value-added industries that produce the manufactures that Asia requires.”

We are doomed, saith the preacher, and should accommodate ourselves to it. In times of growing governmental power, protestation at some point becomes futile. Little is served by standing in front of a charging Mongol army and shouting, “No! You should reconsider!

Perhaps some other course would be advisable. Let’s parley….”
Complaint is useless. It is too late. It booteth not. We are done. The Mongols ride. America comes apart at the seams. The country turns into something altogether new, new for America.

In high school, I read Shirer, first Berlin Diary and then The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I had little idea what I was reading. A naval base in rural Virginia is not a hotbed of historical understanding, or any understanding. I knew nothing of Weimar or the Spartacists or the Treaty of Versailles. Still, I dimly grasped that a theretofore civilized country with great rapidity turned into something horrible. It was not an evolutionary change, like the Industrial Revolution. Brahms to Goebbels in a decade.

Something alike happens in America, and one wonders—I wonder, anyway—how can this be? In little more than a decade, the Constitution has died, the economy welters in irreversible decline, we have perpetual war, all power lies in the hands of the executive, the police are supreme, and a surveillance beyond Orwell’s imaginings falls into place.

These observations are now commonplace. It is almost boring to read of them—yet they proceed apace. Where we go, we go fast. Already against the authorities there is no recourse. Should you talk back to the police, you will spend the night in jail.

I sometimes wonder whether there is not some malign force in play, some diabolical miasma with a sense of humor that, having brought the Soviet Union down, amuses itself by turning the United States into the same thing. Or maybe it is just that if any state that can become totalitarian, it will.

Or maybe it was just a chance simultaneity of enabling events.

Communism died in China and thus ceased to protect America from the withering competition of a populous, intelligent, and industrious race. The internet and easy transportation allowed American companies to abandon ship and head for cheaper climes. They did. Huge countries unexpectedly began a meteoric rise (if meteors rise), chiefly the BRICs. Big once-American corporations became free-floating transnational beings, loyal only to themselves. Open an apparently American laptop and you find that the screen and memory come from Korea, the hard drive from Malaya, the CPU from an Intel lab in Ireland, the whole thing assembled in Taiwan. America cannot stanch the bleeding.

Corporations rule the country, and go whither they will.

Have you ever thrown a stick for a dog, which loves to chase it but, when he comes back with it, cannot bring himself to give it to you to throw again, although that is what he wants? The United States cannot let go of its empire. It fights war after war, constantly losing, bleeding money it doesn’t have, because—because it can’t let go. The military itself, an upgraded WWII force, badly unsuited to modern war, cannot let go of its glorious carriers and obsolescent combat aircraft. Governments too can suffer from arteriosclerosis.

And now the Pentagon growls fiercely at China, like an aging terrier at a Rottweiler pup. The world changes. Minds do not. Some minds do not.

Domestically, the storm likewise approaches. Desperation encourages desperate measures, a hard line, and invites the notorious Man on a Horse.

Economically, the country has trapped itself. It is bankrupt in all but admission, but it cannot spend more prudently. If it cuts welfare in the cities, riots will ensure and elections will be lost. If it cuts the bloated federal bureaucracy, a form of welfare, the dismissed will add to an already dangerously high number of the unemployed. And elections will be lost.

Cut the military? It and its parasitic industries are so large, so deeply embedded in the fabric of the country, so rife with influential people with families to feed, that reductions are not possible. The suggestion of even minor and usually fraudulent cuts is greeted by predictions of dire but unspecified consequences. Minor cuts are not what are needed.

The dog cannot let go.

It is said that democracy depends on an informed public. This is to say that democracy is impossible. In the American case, blank ignorance of anything outside the borders leaves people easily manipulated. The genius of the American political system is that it is not necessary to suppress inconvenient information, but only to keep it off television. So few people will encounter it as not to matter.

Giving people the choice between Candidate A and Candidate A, neither of whom addresses the real problems of the nation, is to grant them the influence they would have had in the Habsburg Empire.

But it keeps them quiet.

It would be interesting to ask the general public: “Which of the following Arab countries is suspected of trying to develop nuclear weapons? (1) Turkey (2) Pakistan (3) Iran (4) Afghanistan (5) None of the above.”

Nonsense is ever a firm basis for politics. The American public believes itself to be free, to have a spirit of rugged individualism, to live in a democracy admired by the world. In fact Americans are not particularly free and becoming less so by the minute, are not individualists but herd consumers formed by a controlled press, and do not live in a democracy.

And totalitarianism comes. This is no longer the assertion of those dropped on their heads as children. Daily we read of more weaponry for the police, more surveillance authorized by courts, more unlegislated powers for Homeland Security. Currency controls fall into place to prevent people from fleeing the country with their assets.

In this direction, I think, lies the future. It is perfectly possible to store every email sent, every purchase made except by cash, every withdrawal of cash; to institute airport-style “security” for trains and buses; to monitor any conversation by telephone; automatically to track cell phones and read license plates and store it all. We are close. We are very close.

Protesting is pointless. No governmental mechanism prevents the headlong progress of things that would have sickened Thomas Jefferson. In the presidential debates neither Candidate A nor Candidate A has said, so far as I know, a word about the tightening watchfulness.

The only reasonable approach is to lie down and enjoy it. Which I shall do.